Socialists Claim Key to New Serbian Government

Socialists emerge as kingmakers after opposition Progressives take narrow lead over Democrats in general election; Tadic and Nikolic to go through to second round in presidential race.

Bojana Barlovac

BIRN

Belgrade

In the biggest surprise in the Serbian election results so far, the Socialist Party, the party of former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, has performed much better than most pollsters expected.

According to the final estimates published on Monday, the opposition Progressive Party won 24.7 per cent of the vote, the ruling Democratic Party won 23.2 per cent and the Socialists came third on 16.6 per cent.

Of the smaller parties, the United Regions of Serbia won 6.1 per cent, the Liberals 6.6 per cent and the Democratic Party of Serbia, DSS, 7.2 per cent.

The hard-line nationalist Radical Party, with 4.6 per cent of the votes, did not pass the threshold.

The Socialist leader, Ivica Dacic, said it was clear that his party had triumphed in the elections and that he will be the new prime minister.

"It might be unclear who will be the president of Serbia but it is well known who will be the prime minister," Dacic said.

He said the time when his party could be pushed around and treated as marginal was over and the fate of the main parties lay in his hands.

If the final results, announced by the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy, CeSID, are accurate, the Democrat-led coalition will win 68 seats of the 250 seats in parliament. The Progressives will take 73 seats, the Socialists 45, the DSS 20, the Liberals 20 and the United Regions of Serbia 16.

The main ethnic Hungarian party will get five seats, while the Party of DemocraticAction of Sandzak, the Vlach party and the party AllTogether will get one seat each.

The final result might change slightly depending on the results from Kosovo, where the Kosovo Serbs voted under the auspices of the OSCE.

According to CeSID, the only impact Kosovo votes might have is that the Democratic Party of Serbia, DSS, might get an extra seat in the parliament.

Twelve years after the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, the scene has changed significantly as parties rise, fall and change their minds. See Balkan Insight's profiles of Serbia's ruling and opposition parties.